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28.2.15

This book, which I found last year in a local charity shop, is truly brillo pads. It's completely and utterly swingorilliant. It transports me back effortlessly to the heyday of Smash Hitsmagazine - that heyday, of course, being the 1980s. Those were the days of Madonna, Morton "Snorten Forten" Harket, miserable Morrisey, Bros, Jason and Kylie, Wham!, Adam and the Ants and other "pop" "stars". The days of "akchewerlery" and frightwigs. The days of Rick Astley's Ruddy Big Pig. The days of Black Type. Black Type? Yus, mateyboots, Sir Blackford of Type, the legendary letters page editor of Smash Hits.

In 1986 a nation mourned as horrendously horrible news broke: Black Type had been brutally murdered by a picnic table-wielding maniac. Stunned horrendous horror gave way to cries of "worra swizz!" as it all turned out to be a dream and Black Type lived on to blacken many more pages of Smash Hits.

Some utterly fabby Smash Hits covers from 1986 and 1987. Yes, folks, we have Howard Jones! We have Duran Duran! We have the Beastie Boys! And yes, yes, YES!!! we have Nick Kamen and the Housemartins.

The book even features some advertisements from the 1980s. Remember chat lines? After British Telecom arrived in 1980 and became a public corporation in late 1981, all sorts of new and highly exciting thingies happened - things like chatlines, which rose into the stratosphere in the mid-1980s. Great fun, coz the World Wide Web wouldn't be invented until 1989, so you could natter to all sorts of Tom, Dick and Harrys in the comfort and safety of your own black ash infested pad even back then. But chatlines had such potential aggro value they were actually featured as a storyline on Brookside. Yep, some kiddies dialled the digits and drove their parents' phone bills sky high, causing many tears and smacked botties before bedtime.

17.2.15

Thank gawd for Angie, one of the few who brought some fashion reality to Albert Square!

30 years of EastEnders! And, of course, most of us who were there will fondly recall the soap's beginning on 19 February, 1985. But there was a mystery back then which troubled me...

Why did so many of the characters look so dowdy? With the exception of Angie and a few others, the residents of Albert Square looked thoroughly grotty.And this, slap-bang in the middle of the 1980s, a time of bright colours, big shoulders, huge hair and other marvels.I thought at the time that they must be having it rough in the old East End, although unlikely as rough as the residents of Albert Square (a newspaper article a couple of years later, contrasted the lives of the residents of a real East End square with our Albert, and found that people were actually rather better off and things were nowhere near as aggro.).However, the brilliant but somewhat misguided Julia Smith wanted to set the show "uncompromisingly in the 1980s" - and by that, we mean the trendy lefty's view of the 1980s, not the real 1980s. It was unthinkable for these wine bar-frequenting TV types to present anybody as having a good time in the Thatcher/Reagan era.And so the reality - that many real '80s East Enders were spending lots of dosh on looking posh (in the '80s sense of the word, of course!) and rather enjoying themselves with the credit boom and whatnot had to be ignored.June Hudson, original costume designer of EastEnders, had done her research. In 1984, she had taken a look at real EastEnders. No lack of bright up-to-date fashions, nor dosh either. An interview with her in the Radio Times this year reveals:... the two women [June Hudson and producer Julia Smith] clashed over the look of EastEnders. “Julia said,
‘You should be able to get all the clothes from Oxfam.’ But I’d done my
homework, weeks of research in the East End, in Ridley Road and Roman
Road markets. I noticed how bright and fashionable the people were. I
felt I had to make a stand with Julia over the look, the brightness of
real East Enders. It was all about pride and image in the East End in
the early 80s. I was amazed by the sheer cash, people getting wads of
notes out of their pockets as thick as your wrist."Although the early episodes achieved a careworn, grungy
patina, June Hudson stuck to her guns and several characters looked
smart and colourfully dressed. And soon she felt vindicated: “The Sunday
Mirror ran a story ‘The bright and fashionable East End – will the
BBC get it right?’ Somebody stuck it on Julia’s door... and it wasn’t
me.”Several years later, after they’d both moved on from
EastEnders, June Hudson had lunch with Julia Smith at BBC Television
Centre, and her former boss, the Godmother of EastEnders, finally
conceded on the “bright and fashionable” East End: “D’you know, I think
you could have been right there, June.”

Michelle tells Den he's the father of the sprog she's expecting. Great storyline. Great characters. Great acting. But where the hell did 'Chelle get that cardie?What a shame that the wine bar leftie TV execs marred the early 'Enders episodes. Angie and Sharon and a few others were fortunate, but poor old 'Chelle! Never saw a girl her age dressed like that! But then, the "impartial" BBC had it in for Thatcher by the mid-1980s (I couldn't stick her myself, but things were bright and glitzy more than not, it must be said!) and TV execs like Julia Smith were determined to (mis) represent life like wot it was lived. That was all part of the 1980s scene.

However, Albert Square was real in some ways. I lived somewhere very similar, though in a different part of England, and there were loads of characters round my way like Lou Beale and Ethel Skinner and Dot Cotton. The crime rate was nowhere near as high, although my neighbourhood was dog-rough, but hey, EastEnders was leftie "Isn't Thatcher terrible?" soapland, so things had to look grim. And, of course, the 1980s in my poor-as-could-be area were much more dressy than Walford, and there seemed to be a lot more aspiring going on.

But, whatever.

EastEnders was still must-watch viewing for me back then. The social issues and abrasive characters were a tremendous breath of fresh air in the world of soap operas, following on the good (similarly leftie) work of Brookside, which had begun in November 1982.

So... happy birthday, EastEnders!

By the way, I've still got my pink linen Miami Vice-style jacket from 1985. Looked so good with a neon blue mesh vest and the sleeves pushed up.

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INTRODUCTION

The '80s Actual blog is designed to be an antidote to all those television shows and on-line articles of recent years which examine pop culture - and frequently get it hopelessly wrong! If you sat watching the BBC's "I Love The 1970s" and exclaimed over items being shown "I could swear that was 1968!" or "Wasn't that 1981?" chances are you were right.

If you look at certain '70s fan sites and think a lot of the material written about is actually from the '80s, you are almost certainly correct.

If on-line encyclopedia articles which state that pop culture of 1983 is really 1977, or similar, have you wishing for reality, then '80s Actual is for you.

There is a huge drive in the media and on-line to negate the 1980s, to attribute that decade's innovations and fond memories to other decades, and basically to present it as a completely vapid ten years, not worthy of examination.

I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's just comforting to have a decade people can scapegoat and declare "HORRIBLE"?

This blog is based on actual memories, media footage (thank you, YouTube!) and snippets of newspaper and magazine articles from the 1980s. If you read it here, I think you can rest assured it's accurate, though I can take no responsibility for the newspaper reports from the decade!The '80s Actual blog examines the decade's news stories - from the emergence of Lady Diana Spencer into the public eye in 1980, to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Was it simply "The Greed Decade" as many like to claim? I think not - the '80s saw the emergence of yuppies, but also Red Wedge, the Greenham Common Peace Women, and increasing concern for the environment. It may be convenient to scapegoat the '80s as the cause of all known ills, but the reality of the decade was far different - absolute bedlam, as Right fought Left, idealism fought corporate ambition. The election ofRonald Reagan as American President in 1980, and his second victory in 1984, had a far more decisive effect on the international political landscape than the three successive general election victories of UK Prime MinisterMargaretThatcher in 1979, 1983 and 1987.

Musically, the 1980s saw the beginnings of House Music, the exciting and still evolving world of synths taking centre stage, the evolvement of Rap music into the fully-fledged Hip Hop scene, Band Aid and Live Aid, great Indie, startling Acid House, and Raves...

And there was so much more! The decade truly had something for everyone - and provided a welcome escape for a while from the long-running and boring saga of flared trousers as fashion, begun back in the 1960s!

There are also also '80s Actual sister blogs taking us back to the '70s and '60s - The Real 1970s and Spacehopper.The view of the 1980s presented here is from an English perspective - much of the original '80s material used is from England, but I hope this blog will prove useful and enjoyable to people in the other nations of the UK and much further afield.